solastalgia // strange landscapes

nostalgic for landscapes of solace - 28 paintings on paper

So•la•stal•gia

[sɒləˈstældʒə] noun

  1. the distress experienced when the natural environment close to one’s home is damaged

  2. a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home, but the environment has changed

  3. a portmanteau of the words ‘solace’ and ‘nostalgia’ referring to a lack of ease due to environmental change that a person is powerless to do anything about

Solastagia // Strange Landscapes presents a series of 28 landscapes that are at once beautiful and foreboding. The compositions elicit an uneasy tension, a combination of elements that are elegant yet desolate, familiar yet jarring.

The landscapes shown may be near or far, grounded in reality or imagined — suggesting that the depictions hint more at a state of mind than an actual place. A repeating motif that appears in several of the paintings is a ghostly silhouette of two people looking out onto the scene, heightening a sense of detached longing. As climate change intensifies, we are witnesses to landscapes that are changing right before our eyes.

Jolly de Guzman is Avenue 50 Studio’s first artist-in-residence, a role that he simultaneously holds with the Los Angeles Center for Urban Natural Resources Sustainability. For this joint art residency, Jolly spent the first half of 2022 immersed in exploration of how extreme heat, drought, and wildfire are affecting some of Los Angeles’s climate-changed communities and how those communities are responding to the shifts. From exploring LA neighborhoods and burn areas of the Angeles National Forest on foot, to curating the Shade In LA art installation on heat equity, to taking a deep dive into science and storytelling on these topics, Jolly seeks to crystallize a vision for a future Los Angeles that connects people to nature as agents of positive change in an era of unprecedented shifts.

Artwork: acrylic on paper, 11” x 14” (image 9” x 12”), $300. To purchase artwork email us.